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6.
Mac|LifeC R E AT E S H A R E
E N J OY
J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 1 V O L . 5 N O . 1
FEATURESCOVER STORY
22 Today’s Magic,
Tomorrow’s Reality
We gaze into Apple’s crystal ball and suss out what
new technology Apple will employ in its next game-
changers. From kinetic energy to a 3D iPad, our
vision for Apple runs the gamut!
By Paul Curthoys, Jon Phillips,
Ray Aguilera & Susie Ochs
4 JAN•11 maclife.com
45 How to Stuff
Snow Leopard with
Lion Features
With the proper applications and
settings, you can mimic almost
every great part of Lion—months
before it releases!
By Cory Bohon
35 It’s a Snap!
Take control of your messy folders packed with
photos and improve image quality with the best
Mac apps for the job.
By Rod Lawton
COVER ILLUSTRATION: ADAM BENTON
worldmagsworldmags
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8.
>>>Digital|Life EDITORIAL
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Paul Curthoys
SENIOR EDITOR Susie Ochs
ONLINE EDITOR Roberto Baldwin
REVIEWS EDITOR Ray Aguilera
ASSOCIATE EDITORS Florence Ion, Nic Vargus
COPY EDITOR Kristin Luce
ARCHDUKE OF THE INTERNET Jason Amor
CONTRIBUTORS Chris Barylick, Adam Berenstain, David Biedny,
Cory Bohon, Michelle Delio, Stuart Gripman, Andrew Hayward,
Rod Lawton, Rik Myslewski, Steve Paris, Scott Rose,
Michael Simon, Zack Stern
ART
ART DIRECTOR Robin Dick
ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Mark Rosenthal
PHOTOGRAPHERS Samantha Berg, Mark Madeo
PHOTO ASSISTANT Patrick Kawahara
ILLUSTRATOR Adam Benton
BUSINESS
VICE PRESIDENT/GENERAL MANAGER Kate Byrne, 650-238-2049
NATIONAL SALES DIRECTOR Jane Evans, 650-238-2529
REGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR Anthony Losanno, 646-723-5493
WEST COAST SALES MANAGER Greg Ryder, 650-745-9243
EAST COAST ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE John Ortenzio, 646-723-5492
SENIOR MARKETING MANAGER Andrea Recio-Ang
MARKETING ASSOCIATE Robbie Montinola
ADVERTISING COORDINATOR Jose Urrutia, 650-238-2498
PRODUCTION
PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Michael Hollister
PRODUCTION MANAGER Larry Briseno
PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Lewis Lee
PRINT ORDER COORDINATOR Jennifer Lim
CONSUMER MARKETING
VICE PRESIDENT Rich McCarthy
CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Crystal Hudson
NEWSSTAND DIRECTOR Bill Shewey
CONSUMER MARKETING OPERATIONS DIRECTOR Lisa Radler
RENEWAL & BILLING MANAGER Mike Hill
SR. ONLINE CONSUMER MARKETING MANAGER Jennifer Trinkner
CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGER Mike Frassica
Mac|Life
6 JAN•11 maclife.com
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MORE MAC|LIFE, LESS PAPER
Six Mac Web Browsers:
How Do They Stack Up?
RockMelt blasted into our collective
consciousness this month to
compete for web-browsing
dominance against Safari, Firefox,
Opera, Chrome, and Flock. So which
one is right for you?
http://bit.ly/ML_brow
How To Record Audio
From Just About
Any Source
If you need to record audio from
a site, a guitar, or just your own
voice, this how-to will keep the
audio ﬂowing.
http://bit.ly/ML_aud
How To Sync All The
iTunes Libraries In
Your House
Learn how to set up MediaRover
on multiple Macs, conﬁgure a
NAS device using an AirPort
router, and then sync and
manage your libraries.
http://bit.ly/ML_itu
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COMMENT OF THE MONTH:
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RETWEET OF THE MONTH:
Jrsydevils: Microsoft just LOL’d RT @MacLife:
Trojan named Boonana is found on the Mac.
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10.
Paul Curthoys, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
NEW APP. NEW WEBSITE.
NEW iPAD TOGGLE SWITCH?
>>>Consider STAY IN TOUCH WITH US ON TWITTER: @MACLIFE
S
ometimes Apple completely bafﬂes me. No, this isn’t
a column about the Beatles coming to iTunes. Instead,
I’m stuck on Apple’s curious decision to force its iPad
customers to accept a change that, judging from the widespread
outcry, no one seems to want. This change comes with iOS 4.2,
which modernizes the iPad with many snazzy features, but also
turns the hardware switch that activates orientation lock into a
mute switch. At press time, 4.2 hadn’t yet been released to the
public, but we’ve tried out this feature in beta.
Yes, the orientation lock is still available via software—it’s on
the far left of the multi-tasking bar, just like it is on an iPhone
running iOS4. While phones need the power to insta-mute, the iPad
doesn’t. The tablet’s spastic tendency to rapidly cycle between
portrait and landscape should be a bigger priority, especially when
you can already mute your iPad almost instantly by holding down
the volume toggle. So why would Apple force this change?
Yes, I understand that businesses sometimes have to make
unpopular decisions. For instance, we’ve recently decided to
close our website’s forums and convert our audio podcast into a
video show. But unlike the iPad’s new toggle switch, the changes
we’ve made are necessary moves that allow us to focus our
resources on much bigger, more important things: our freshly
redesigned website and our second iPad app.
If you haven’t been by MacLife.com in a while, I’d love for
you to check it out. It’s just a beauty, and it offers way more
functionality—better browsability, more interactivity and
community, and a keener focus on the kinds of stories (how-to’s,
features) that you guys tell us you enjoy most.
And by the time you read this, we hope that our next iPad app
is available on the App Store (no promises; app release dates are
always iffy). The app is called Mac|Life’s iPad Essentials Guide,
and with it, we’ve focused on building an expert guide to both
iPads and iPhones that’ll help users of all stripes get the most
from their iDevices. In making this app, we listened long and hard
to all the tremendously helpful feedback we got from you on
our ﬁrst app, and you’ll ﬁnd a much-improved experience with
loads of great stories, videos, and social interactivity. I know a lot
of you are also very interested in subscribing to this magazine
on a monthly basis in iPad form, but we’re not quite there yet.
We’re looking
at options,
but our ﬁrst
priority with app
development is
doing something different than what our mag already does. So
tell us what you think of it—as we begin work on our next app,
our biggest priority is hearing from you and making sure we’re
giving you what you want.
Which leads me back to the iPad’s orientation lock. Why
would Apple dig in their heels when their customers clearly want
something else? They could simply make mute vs. orientation
lock into a preference, and everyone would be happy. I’d love
to hear your thoughts on orientation lock, as well as our new
website and app at paul@maclife.com. And rest assured: if you
dislike anything we do as much as Apple’s customers appear to
hate the new orientation lock, we’ll bend over backward to ﬁx it.
Why would Apple dig in their
heels when their customers
clearly want something else?
>>>OVERHEARD AT MAC|LIFE THIS MONTH....
8 JAN•11 maclife.com
“I swear I saw
Bruce Jenner on
The Walking Dead
last night…”
—Robin to Robbie,
discussing zombies
and plastic surgery.
“Don’t you have
any billy goats to
hassle?”
—Robbie, suggesting
retorts for Flo to use
when fending off
internet trolls.
“I’m allergic
to having a
good time.”
—Nic’s comment
after sneezing,
while ﬁnishing up
a Mac|Life special
issue..
“Please don’t
put the MacBook
Air down your
pants.”
—Susie, to a
colleague from
another magazine
who jokingly tried to
jam the 11-inch Air in
his jeans pocket.
“It’s like I want
it to take me out
on a date and
then never call
me back.”
—Flo, remarking
on how the HP Envy
100 printer looks
like it belongs in a
bachelor pad.
“Lookwho’s
makin’itrain
cheesenow!”
—Ray, getting a
little too excited
while trying to beat
Nic’s high score in
Rat on a Scooter XL.
worldmagsworldmags
worldmags

12.
10 JAN•11 maclife.com
iMac Correction
I’m an avid reader, and appreciate all the
information I get from your magazine. However,
I wanted to point out an error in your recent
article reviewing the new iMacs (Nov/10, p58).
I paid close attention to these reviews as I am
currently shopping for an iMac. The article,
although very helpful to me for deciding which
iMac is a better choice, has one small error. It
says that both the 21.5-inch iMacs’ ATI Radeon
graphics cards have 512MB of GDDR3 dedicated
memory, standard. This is not the case: The
3.06GHz Intel Core i3 iMac only comes with
256MB GDDR3 memory for its graphics, while
the 3.2GHz comes with 512MB.—Andrew Camm
You’re absolutely right. I messed that up. The
entry-level $1,199 3.06GHz iMac has an ATI
Radeon HD 4670 graphics processor with
256MB of GDDR3 SDRAM, not 512MB like
I said, and I regret the error. The graphics
card in that machine isn’t even a build-to-
order option—to get 512MB of graphics
memory you need to step up to the $1,499
>>>Share Your opinions, rants & raVEs
I want to say thank you. I recently
converted from Windoze to Mac, and I love
my tech gear. However, I knew from the
moment that I upgraded to iOS 4.0 that
I had made a mistake. I
searched the internet for
a way to return to the old
OS and I found a few sites
saying it was possible, but
I wasn’t sure if they were
reliable. So, I just dealt
with the phone as it was:
slow, buggy, and laggy.
Then I returned from an
overseas trip and my wife
handed me the Oct/10
Mac|Life, featuring a how-
to called “Downgrade
Your iPhone 3G to OS
3.1.3.” I followed the steps
exactly, and when I was ﬁnished....all back
to normal. Great article. Thanks.
—Brent Humphries
You’re so welcome! Apple addressed
some of the performance
issues with iOS 4.1, so I’m
using that now myself. Nic
actually jailbroke his so
he could get features like
home screen wallpapers
that aren’t supported on an
iPhone 3G running iOS 4.
And Susie’s 3G is staying
on iOS 3.1.3 forever.
Anyway, glad your phone
is awesome again.
—Ray
iFIxeD MY iPHONe 3G!
Nic’s also rocking a sweet
lock screen on his jailbroken
iPhone 3G.
worldmagsworldmags
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13.
maclife.com JAN•11 11
3.2GHz iMac. I just purchased that 3.2GHz machine from Apple’s
Refurbished store, actually, and I love it. Happy shopping!—Susie
Pages Can Count
I’m a big fan, but noticed a mistake in the
Nov/10 issue. In “Ditching Your Laptop:
Can It Be Done?” (p26), you said that a
downside to Pages on the iPad was its
lack of a word count. However, a few days
before I read the article, I was checking
out all of the settings in Pages and came
across a word count setting. You can ﬁnd
it by clicking the wrench icon, and clicking
the On button by Word Count. I hope that
helps!—Cheyenne Cenk
Thanks, Cheyenne, good eye. That was
added in version 1.2, which went live in late September—right after
our article was sent to the printer. We run into this from time to time
when discussing iOS software since updates are pretty frequent
(it’s why we include the version number on reviews in the Apps
section, for example). It’s also a great reminder to update your apps
frequently—you might be missing some cool features!—Nic
Outlook 2011 Issues
I purchased Ofﬁce 2011 (“Moving Into a New Ofﬁce,” Dec/10, p43) and
so far, I really like the changes made to PowerPoint, Excel, and Word.
Outlook is a different story—I am very disappointed in it. Many of the
features I used routinely in Entourage are missing: resend, selecting
the category in outgoing mail, and selecting and repositioning icons
on the ribbon, to name a few. I couldn’t set up one of my email clients,
a military account. Although I didn’t purchase the software based on
your review, I don’t think Outlook is nearly as ﬂexible as Entourage,
and I plan to stick with Entourage until major changes in Outlook are
made. Your article doesn’t reﬂect my experience.—David Loomis
Thanks for the feedback. I’m sorry that the Outlook review (4 stars,
p50) didn’t mention the problems you’re experiencing. I’ve run into
a few problems of my own. Entourage 2008 could sync both my
contacts and calendars with Address Book and iCal, which let me
keep that data synced on my iPhone and iPad. But as of now, Outlook
2011 (version 14.0.1) can sync contacts, but not calendars! I have to
manually drag-and-drop appointments made in Outlook—all meeting
requests from my colleagues, in other words—over to iCal to add
them to that calendar. Dragging and dropping, like a cavewoman!
Microsoft promises to ﬁx this in an update, but at press time they
couldn’t give an ETA. I apologize again that our review didn’t include
this sync oversight or the missing features you mentioned. Luckily,
installing Outlook 2011 doesn’t overwrite Entourage 2008, and
hopefully Outlook will be updated soon.—Susie
You should probably
update more often than
Susie does—115 updates
available?! Wow.
By submitting unsolicited material to us, you grant Future a license to publish the material in whole or
in part in all editions of the magazine, including licensed editions, in any and all media throughout the
world. Future is not responsible for loss, damage to, or return of any unsolicited materials.
WRITE TO US: letters@maclife.com or Mac|Life, 4000 Shoreline Court, Suite
400, South San Francisco, CA 94080
FOR SUBSCRIPTION QUERIES: Call toll-free 1-888-771-6222
OTHER ESSENTIALS
ALL NEW
ACCESSORIES
for iPad
www.macally.com
CASES CAR ACCESSORIES USB CHARGINGEARPHONE
y.c mc m
worldmagsworldmags
worldmags

14.
>>>StartFEED YOUR MIND. FEAST YOUR EYES.
A
pple’s October event saw the release of a brand-new beaut of
a MacBook Air (p56) and iLife ’11 (reviews on p60 and how-tos
on p86), as well as a preview of Mac OS 10.7 Lion (p45), which
is due out this summer. But one announced Lion feature is actually
coming out early—Apple plans to throw open the doors of its Mac App
Store within 90 days of the October 20 event, launching the store on
Snow Leopard Macs before Lion ever puts its paws on the ground.
As with the App Store already available on iOS devices, Apple will
host the store and fulﬁll the transactions for a 30 percent cut of sales.
Developers keep the other 70 percent and rest assured that their
applications can be seen and purchased from every Mac in the land.
And users like us get one-click purchasing using our iTunes Store
accounts, automatic downloads, easy updates, and the ability to re-
download apps on all our Macs.
So on its face, the Mac App Store sounds like win-win-win. But
nothing’s ever that simple. With the App Store for iOS, Apple’s been
accused of sitting on submitted updates for too long, being wishy-
washy about what they’ll accept and what they’ll reject, and not always
explaining their decisions in a satisfactory manner. (Columnist Rik
Myslewski delves into those concerns on p96.)
Since Apple doesn’t talk about unreleased products and users haven’t
seen the Mac App Store yet, we turned to the developers to get their
(admittedly early) take. Is the Mac App Store a level playing ﬁeld or the
end of free-range development as we know it? Did its announcement
provoke shivers of anticipation or fear? To ﬁnd out, we exchanged emails
with Nick Davies from Corel (corel.com), Justin Cepelak from SplashData
(splashdata.com), and Nicholas Reville from the Participatory Culture
Foundation (pculture.org), makers of Miro and other free applications.
what the
Mac app Store
MeanS for youWith its iOS App Store a runaway success, Apple
looks to copy the formula with Mac applications.
We turned to three leading Mac developers for
insight on this new option. BY MICHELLE DELIO
12 Jan•11 maclife.com
worldmagsworldmags
worldmags

15.
MAc|LIFE: What was your ﬁrst reaction to the Mac App Store?
NIck DAvIES, corel’s senior vice president, corporate marketing:
For developers, the store is a ready-made vehicle to reach customers.
If you’re a new developer without established channels, it provides a
direct route to users. For established developers like Corel, it provides an
additional, direct way to connect with Mac users. And we’re intrigued by
the impact it could have on our future software development.
JUSTIN cEpELAk, vice president of SplashData: We were really
surprised and excited. We had been hoping they would build a desktop
equivalent of the App Store for a while since it has been a strong
channel for us in the mobile space.
NIchOLAS REvILLE, executive director of the participatory
culture Foundation: I think the new store solves an important
usability challenge. Just ﬁnding a downloaded ﬁle and opening a
DMG or installer can be difﬁcult for lots of users. However, I also think
it’s extremely dangerous for developers and Mac users; the mobile
App Store has become Exhibit A of everything bad about centralized
corporate control over users. There are lots of ways to make application
distribution and sales better for both developers and users without
restricting everyone’s freedom to create or install software. Because
their competitors’ products are such a mess, Apple can intentionally
conﬂate ease-of-use with centralized control, and it starts to seem like
it’s true. Just the fact that I’m wondering whether criticizing Apple
could lead Miro to be rejected from the Mac App Store suggests that
there’s a structural problem here.
MAc|LIFE: how might the Mac App Store change the way
your company provides applications to Mac users?
DAvIES: It’s still too early to make a deﬁnitive statement on the
impact this will have on us. Like other developers, we’d have to
change our apps to have them meet the guidelines. We envision
some interesting opportunities for our consumer apps. They’re
lighter and easy to use, making them ideal for this channel.
Offering Mac users a one-stop shop for the majority of their
software needs is a great thing, and we deﬁnitely want to be part
of it. Of course, Corel’s known for Painter, which is more robust,
professional, and established. I think developers like us have
questions about how this type of product will ﬁt into the Mac App
Store and its guidelines. We know our Painter customers well.
Their buying process is very different from someone who’s buying
a mobile app off iTunes. They often want to try out the program
before purchasing and many still prefer to own the DVD and the
accompanying documentation. In many cases, they have an increased
desire to have a more direct relationship with us. We need to see how the
App Store guidelines support what we know our Painter customer wants.
cEpELAk: We’ll have to build special releases of our desktop
applications (SplashID, SplashMoney, SplashShopper, and SplashNotes)
to be distributed in the Mac App Store without copy protections since
Apple will handle that on their end. As far as distribution, we feel that
we will reach a broader audience through this channel because the App
Store approach to shopping is a more fun and immersive experience
than searching for software on the entire web.
REvILLE: We will certainly submit our app to the store, and we’ll also
continue to maintain our website as a way to download. Since our
software is free, I don’t think it will affect us as much as the creators of
paid software—I expect many Mac software companies will stop doing
their own payment processing and registration and will move all sales
to the Mac App Store.
MAc|LIFE: how about the Mac application-development market
as a whole?
DAvIES: Overall, I think the Mac App Store is a great opportunity for
developers. The fact that the store exists will spur the development and
sales of new apps simply because it’ll be easier for customers to ﬁnd
and connect with more software options. If the Mac App Store delivers
the same great experience as the iTunes App Store, people will have the
chance to discover more apps and in turn will be inclined to buy more.
cEpELAk: If the mobile App Store teaches us anything, it’s that a
simple and well-designed one-stop shop encourages users to buy more
software than they would otherwise.
MAc|LIFE: What would you ask Steve Jobs about the Mac App Store
if you were having lunch with him? What advice would you give him?
DAvIES: First, I’d let him know it’s great they’re doing this. Apple offers
an exceptional buying experience to consumers, and we support the
move to bring this to Mac software. I’d also ask him how he thinks the
established apps—the long-time mega-brands of the Mac software
world—ﬁt into this new environment. Many of these brands, like Painter,
have been tied to the Mac platform since the start, so how can we work
together to ensure the store provides an equally efﬁcient channel for
them? Could physical product be an option for those who want it? Also,
many customers want to try out software before making an investment
in it, particularly when it’s a tool they need for their livelihood. Their
expectations are high, and we owe them a different experience.
cEpELAk: We’re curious to see how copy protection will be handled
since desktop software piracy is a serious issue facing developers. We’re
also wondering how the review process will be compared to the mobile
store. Developers have free rein over what they can do with desktop
software when they distribute it themselves, so it’ll be interesting to see
what gets caught in the ﬁne mesh of the Apple ﬁlters.
REvILLE: I think Apple could be an incredible example of how to
do everything right: not just design and user experience, but also
freedom and openness. Apple would never have invented something
as open or messy as the internet, but they are beneﬁting immensely
from its success and the open standards behind it—remember when
you couldn’t switch to a Mac because it wasn’t compatible with other
software? The web is compatible everywhere because it’s open. So why
not have Apple turn its brilliance to making openness more elegant,
rather than insisting on central control?
maclife.com JAN•11 13
The Mac App Store looks a lot like the iOS App Store, but that’s not iTunes.
worldmagsworldmags
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16.
FIVE REASONS THE MAC APP STORE WILL ROCK…
AND FIVE REASONS IT’LL SUCK
If hearing the phrase “Mac App Store” ﬁlls you with equal parts glee and dread, you are not alone. It’s not that we don’t welcome a healthy
serving of innovation, but we’re always a little skeptical when someone—even Steve Jobs—tries to ﬁx something that isn’t broken. Of
course, the Mac App Store might very well be the greatest thing to happen to the platform since the two-button mouse. But if it’s not, don’t
say we didn’t warn you.—Michael Simon
1. Synergy Nobody wants to see iOS take over our beloved Mac OS,
but people who own iOS devices know what a big role they play in our
daily lives. If enough iPad and iPhone developers bring their talents to
the Mac, their iOS-styled OS X apps (and OS X–styled iOS apps) could
blur the line between mobile and desktop even more. Some of
our favorite iOS apps already work with Mac counterparts
(Stanza, for example), and the Mac App Store could
accelerate that trend.
2. PrIcIng If the Mac App Store is anything like the
iOS App Store, competition will be ﬁerce and developers will
be looking for any way to stand out among the ﬁeld. That’s
a good thing for consumers because apps will need to be
slick, polished, and powerful (with lots of updates, please!).
They’ll also need to be competitively priced. Obviously we
don’t expect to see Photoshop suddenly drop to $9.99, but
we think there’ll be plenty of bargains to be had once the store opens
its doors.
3. exPOSure It’s not easy being a Mac developer. The Mac’s install
base is a (growing!) fraction of Windows’, and that means simply
building a killer app isn’t enough—developers also need to market
it aggressively via websites, magazines (ahem), and word of mouth.
Retail shelf space for software is shrinking at outlets nationwide, even
Apple Stores. The Mac App Store will give developers a chance to shine
on a big stage with help from Apple’s lists, ratings, and spotlights.
And consumers beneﬁt too because developers can spend more time
developing, instead of marketing.
4. SIMPlIcIty Ease of use has always been the calling card of OS X,
and the Mac App Store looks to drive that point home: no serial
numbers, instruction manuals, clumsy packaging, or discs. By bringing
the convenience of the iOS App Store to the Mac, Apple is removing
an entire level of complication for switchers, which is almost certain to
translate into a bigger market share.
5. DelIvery Let’s face it, there’s no better delivery system than the
App Store’s nearly instant, one-click purchase and installation process.
The Mac App Store will work the same way, charging your account and
immediately downloading and installing the application for you. No
more unzipping downloads, loading and ejecting disk images, trashing
DMG ﬁles, or agreeing to licenses. Just start enjoying the app. This will
be a boon for switchers as well.
1. reStrIctIOnS We Mac users have always cherished our OS over
that of our Cocoa-less counterparts, but by no means is it perfect. We
doubt that’s going to change with Lion, but Apple has already made it
clear that it won’t be allowing apps that install kernel extensions or “do
not use the appropriate Mac OS X APIs for modifying user data stored
by other apps” in the Mac App Store. Of course, Steve assures us that
we’ll still be able to download and install apps like FruitMenu or Cocktail
the old-fashioned way, but the tin-hatted paranoid inside us fears that
total lockdown might be just a few more cats away.
2. clutter For every must-have iPhone app, there are about
800 useless ones. On our iPhone’s App Store, it’s little more than a
nuisance, but if that glut of nonsense fartware starts getting ported to
the Mac, we might have to draw the line. One of the Mac App Store’s
best features will be the discovery of hidden gems, but if its virtual
shelves start ﬁlling up with pointlessness, the actually good developers
might turn their backs on it altogether. Apple will have to walk a
tightrope between being too exclusive and being too inclusive, but
after all, this was their idea.
3. ADS We might be jumping to conclusions here, but we couldn’t help
but notice there isn’t a restriction against ads in the Mac App Store
Review Guidelines. And if developers take cues from the iOS App Store,
we could see lots of single-function free and “lite” apps. And how
exactly are all these entrepreneurs supposed to make money by giving
away their products? Say goodbye to freeware and hello to iAd banners
while you work.
4. HOMOgenIzAtIOn We can’t imagine apps like Outlook, AutoCAD,
or InDesign being sold in the Mac App Store, and we know they’ll be
ﬁne on their own…but what about the little guys? We love coming
across innovative little apps that do something none of us ever
imagined. And sure, those talented “garage” developers might be able
to wedge their creations into the Mac App Store, but if they
can’t…will ﬁscal responsibility force them to abandon their
more innovative creations in favor of more vanilla work
that can actually be sold in the store? We sure hope not.
5. IMPulSe BuyS We’ve all bought iOS apps that we
instantly regret (iBeer anyone?), but app purchases for
our Macs usually require at least a little research before
we commit. Plus, typing out that credit card number or
logging into PayPal gives you more chances to reconsider and
back out. But once we have thousands of apps at our ﬁngertips,
it’s going to take quite a bit of restraint (or credit card limits) to stop
the spending spree. We just hope Mac apps—all Mac apps—stay as easy
to uninstall as they are now.
THEGOOD
THEBAD
14 JAN•11 maclife.com
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17.
InsIde FaceTIme For macComb your hair and check your teeth for spinach—these tips and tricks will help
you start video-chatting up a storm from your Mac! BY CORY BOHON AND SUSIE OCHS
FaceTime for Mac, introduced at October’s exciting Back to the Mac event, ﬁnally lets Mac users video-chat with people using an
iPhone 4 or fourth-gen iPod touch. FaceTime for Mac is still in beta, but it’s free and easy to use. How easy? So easy we can explain it
all in one page…
StAtE YOUR PREfERENCES
FaceTime on the Mac works just as it does on the iPod touch. You sign in with your
Apple ID (the account you use for the iTunes Store), and people who have that email
address in their Contacts list can click your name to call you.
But everyone we know has multiple email addresses, and maybe the address you
use for your Apple ID isn’t the one your friends and family use to correspond with
you. No worries—in FaceTime > Preferences, you can add more email addresses to
your account by clicking Add Another Email. You can also specify which address
shows up when you call someone with the Caller ID menu.
FaceTime for Mac doesn’t quit when you close the application. It’s always on
standby. If someone calls you and you don’t have FaceTime open, it’ll automatically
launch and show you a preview window where you can accept or deny the call.
If you want to turn FaceTime all the way off, use the On/Off switch in FaceTime >
Preferences.
IN-CAll CONtROlS
When you’re chatting, FaceTime only shows your chat, hiding
the controls (à la QuickTime X) until you mouse over the
window. When you do, you’ll see buttons for Mute, End, and
Full Screen along the bottom of the window, shown in the
screenshot on the far right.
But you get a few more controls in the menu bar’s Video
menu, shown in the screenshot on the near right. You can
mute the call here too or switch from portrait orientation
to landscape. (If your chat buddy is using an iPhone or iPod
touch, the orientation will automatically adjust based on
how they’re holding their device.) You can also switch which
microphone you’re using for your call—although why audio is
under the Video menu is anyone’s guess.
KEYBOARD SHORtCUtS
If you don’t want to use the menus, let your ﬁngers do the talking
with keyboard shortcuts. Press Command-R to switch orientations,
portrait to landscape and vice versa. To jump right into full-screen
view, press Command-Shift-F. Sign out of FaceTime completely
with Command-K, although you have to conﬁrm that in a dialog.
So to turn FaceTime off and quit the app, it’s three keystrokes:
Command-K, Return (to conﬁrm the signoff), Command-Q.
maclife.com Jan•11 15worldmagsworldmags
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18.
iGIVECharity is a obviously good thing, and when iOS apps let you give to worthy causes
by playing games or checking in, it’s a no-brainer…right? BY MICHELLE DELIO
16 JAN•10 maclife.com
>>>Start
T
he last few years haven’t been the happiest time for charities.
The still-sullen economy forced foundations to cut back on their
big donations, so micro donors—individuals who give small
sums as the spirit moves them—are becoming an important source
of funding. But barring tragedies like earthquakes, hurricanes, and
tsunamis, how can a charity connect with the charitable? Overloaded
by requests for our attention, many of us
no longer respond to mail or telephone
solicitations, and we’re all justiﬁably
suspicious of emailed requests for help.
Enter the do-good app. You choose what
causes matter to you, and the app acts as
the go-between. Sometimes you simply
buy the app, and some of the proﬁts go to
the cause. Other apps provide a pipeline
for direct donations. Some will educate
you—the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s
Seafood Guide, for example, helps you
make sustainable seafood choices. Many
apps are happy to entertain you, and you
may also be asked to perform actions
that trigger donations from sponsors.
Earthjustice (earthjustice.org), a
nonproﬁt public-interest law ﬁrm, recently papered San Francisco
subway stations with posters asking people to ﬁre up Foursquare
and “check in at this Earthjustice ad.” The posters addressed timely
environmental issues, and corporate donors pledged to give speciﬁc
amounts for each check-in.
Ray Wan, marketing manager at Earthjustice, says that the goal was
to reach 5,000 check-ins, and by the end of October they had exceeded
5,300. Their major donor was willing to match up to $50,000 in
donations at $10 per check-in, so Earthjustice got the maximum amount
in donations.
“Our campaign was a perfect mixture of the right cause with the
right medium and the right timing,” says Wan. “We made sure to
highlight issues that our audiences could connect with. We picked an
app that was growing immensely popular here in the Bay Area and was
easy to use. And our ads went up at the height of the BP oil crisis, when
the public’s attention was focused on protecting our environment.”
Then there’s entertainment app company Mobile Deluxe
(mobiledeluxe.com), which recently entered the charitable space with
Bliss HD+, a game. Up to 50 percent of its $1.99 price is donated to
Beautiful Day Foundation, which works to educate young women about
breast cancer. Players earn points to win up to ﬁve pink ribbon codes,
and Mobile Deluxe donates $0.20 for every ribbon code.
Portal 2
Portal 2 Lego Universe
“The more you play, the more we give,” says Kellie Hartwell, senior
vice president of marketing. She adds that Mobile Deluxe didn’t set out
to make the world’s most innovative game, focusing instead on creating
a fun and relaxing experience with a real-life reward for players’ time
investment. “It’s not a game for a hardcore gamer, but it’s perfect
for folks looking to share the experience and turn their game reviews
into potential stories about the game
and breast cancer experiences,”
says Hartwell.
Pleased with the results of its ﬁrst
mobile campaign, Earthjustice is planning
its next project now, and Mobile Deluxe
has just released Sudoku Deluxe Green
Edition. The proceeds are donated to
Trees for the Future, a nonproﬁt founded
in 1989 that helps communities around
the world plant trees through seed
distribution.
But Hartwell hopes that app
programmers will get involved in
making games for the smaller, super-
effective nonproﬁts as well as the bigger
charitable organizations. “You can
make a difference not only for the charity’s cause, but for a budding
nonproﬁt as well,” Hartwell says. Just don’t expect that doing the right
thing will always be easy. “There will be cynical people out there that
question your
motivation,”
Hartwell
continues.
“Respond
to them
respectfully
and then forget
about it. You
know you’re
doing good, your
recipients know
it, and that’s all
that matters in
the end.”
“Our campaign was a perfect mixture of
the right cause with the right medium
and the right timing.”
Bliss HD+ is a
$1.99 universal
game that lets
you earn money
for breast cancer
education while
playing.
Earthjustice posted these ads in rapid transit stations, where
iPhone-toting citizens can check in and help while they wait for
the train.
worldmagsworldmags
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19.
From user to listener
MM-1 Transform your computer into a superb
stereo sound system. The MM-1 is a true hi-fi
speaker, shrunk to fit on your desktop. And it
sounds amazing. But then you’d expect nothing
less from the makers of the award-winning
Zeppelin iPod®
speaker, not to mention some of
the most advanced studio speakers in the world.
Listen and you’ll see.
Available at Apple stores and apple.com
www.bowers-wilkins.com/mm-1
worldmagsworldmags
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20.
SHAREWARE PICKS: GREAT GRAPHICS
Two freebies that photographers and video editors shouldn’t leave home without
Sofortbild
Stefan Hafeneger, sofortbildapp.com
Price: Free, donations accepted
Connect a Nikon DSLR to your Mac for tethered shooting and
automatic transfers to your hard drive (or Aperture, Lightroom, or
iPhoto). But that’s not all, not even close—Sofortbild can do HDR,
timed shots, change your camera’s settings, rename photos, and
much, much more. It’s so full-featured we can hardly believe it’s free.
Once upon a time, MacBook Pros with two graphics cards had a
setting that let you switch between them. Now that switching is
done automatically by the OS—unless you get gfxCardStatus,
which lets you override
the auto-switch when
you want to. Using Intel
HD graphics instead of
the Nvidia GeForce GT
330M can save battery
life, and now you’re the
one driving that bus.
gfxCardStatus
Cody Krieger, codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus/
Price: Free, donations accepted
Gum with
Long-Lasting
(iPhone) Flavor
We deal with apps every day, but
when we asked our readers about
their favorite apps, their responses
surprised us. Your favorites includes
hordes of zombie apps, ﬂocks of
Twitter clients, and uncomfortably
high levels of ﬂatulence apps.
But when the random-number
generator picked a winner, it
proved that destiny sometimes
favors those who comment ﬁrst
on Win articles. Our winner was
James Poulson from San Diego,
whose favorite apps range from
Scrabble to Cydia (whatever that is).
Congratulations, James!
>>>Start
YOU RISE TO THE CHALLENGE. WE REWARD YOU WITH COOL PRIZES.
OUR
CONTESTS
ARE ONLINE!
For more details on this
month’s contest, visit
maclife.com/Jan_11_Win.
This month, we’re giving
away a Mysterious Box of
Mystery! Nobody knows
what’s in it until we send
it out, but trust us—you’ll
want whatever’s inside.
James’s prize is a Just
Mobile Gum Plus mobile
battery pack for iPhone
($70, xtand.net). This little
battery is stylish, portable,
and Apple-certiﬁed. Score!
>>>>
18 JAN•11 maclife.com
G i
Y
The menu bar shows an
“N” if you’re using Nvidia
graphics, or an “I” for Intel.
Click it for the menu.If you have a Nikon DSLR, you should deﬁnitely get this.
worldmagsworldmags
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21.
TO ORDER VISIT
neatco.com/MLFREE
OR CALL 866-395-7075
Paper Monsters start so innocently. A pile of receipts
here, a cluster of bills there...but soon, you’ve got a real
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extract key information from your paper, then organizes
it all in a digital ﬁling cabinet. Great for peace of mind.
Bad for Paper Monsters.
Scan and organize receipts, business cards and
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This high-speed, duplex scanner lets you
scan multiple paper types all at once, or
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At less than one pound, the USB-powered
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worldmagsworldmags
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22.
PHOTOGRAPHYBYSAMANTHABERG
20 JAN•11 maclife.com
>>>Even with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, my desk
is still a mess of cables and connectors. And
unfortunately, we don’t get outside much to
enjoy the bay views near Mac|Life HQ. These
Leaf Ties from Lufdesign make my cable
clutter more manageable. And in cool natural
(and a few unnatural) colors, they bring a
little bit of an organic vibe to the techno
landscape of my desk.
FLORENCE
Leaf Tie
lufdesign.blogspot.com
$7 for a pack of 12
>>>Start
The gear we’re LusTing afTer…This monTh
Crave
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23.
>>>For its new Bluetooth headset, Bose
used all of its expertise in making small
audio gear that sounds a lot bigger. And
instead of complicated button presses to
access different features, Bose introduced a
new control scheme that lets you use your
headset intuitively without it popping out
of your ear like so many headsets before it.
It almost makes me willing to walk around
looking like a cyborg again.
RAY
Bluetooth Headset
bose.com
$149.95
>>>The Vibrato headset is made
from a zinc alloy, so it feels
sturdy and durable. And the
in-line remote lets me change
tracks and take calls without
having to pick up my iPhone.
The two-year warranty is nice,
too…considering the beating my
earbuds take with daily use.
NIC
VIBRATO
v-moda.com
$129.99
>>>For drawing or writing on the iPad, a
stylus beats my ﬁnger every time. And
since I’m more of an analog paper-and-pen
person, I love that the Stylus includes a
ballpoint pen on the other end. The trick is
remembering not to use the pen on one of
our precious iPads.
ROBIN
CANDY STYLUS & PEN
hardcandycases.com
$34.95
>>>At press time, details about the Marshall
Headphones were pretty slim, but given the
reputation Marshall has earned for its hard-
rocking amps, I’m already excited. By the time
you read this, I’ll be putting them to the test
with the help of my awesome new Mötorhead
playlist.
ROBERTO
MAJOR
marshallheadphones.com
$99
NC
maclife.com JAN•11 21worldmagsworldmags
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25.
The age of wonder
is just beginning.
Each morning, we shove
devices into our pockets
that, as kids, we could
only goggle at on Star
Trek. Now we can Google
on them, and that’s not
even vaguely impressive.
We live in an era when
every day sees past
science ﬁction become
contemporary mundane
reality, and like you,
that only whets our thirst
for more.
With Apple’s talent
for staggering us with
innovative design,
Cupertino will likely be
at the forefront of our
culture’s next big holy-
crap gadget. Just as
surely, Jobs & Co. will
keep it nailed down under
bulletproof wraps right
up until they’re good and
ready to tell the world
about it.
It’s that culture of
secrecy, combined with
Apple’s gotta-have-it
track record, that makes
it such a blast to dream,
speculate, and even hope
for what might be next.
New iPads and iPhones
are sure things in the
coming year, but we set
our sights much higher.
What will we be lining up
for in 2012 and 2013?
How about 2017? And
how will these devices
transform our lives and
make us look back on the
heyday of the iPhone with
a nostalgic twinge?
For answers, Mac|Life’s
editors delved into the
most cutting-edge trends
and developments in
technology, then applied
them to the product
categories that Apple
dominates. While all of the
resulting prototypes that
we’re unveiling here are
our creations, we’ve made
sure that the tech behind
them actually exists, and
we show you how Apple
could really be putting
it to use. And we didn’t
even nick anything from a
Redwood City bar to do it.
EVERYONE WANTS TO
KNOW WHAT APPLE’S
NEXT BIG THING WILL
BE. SO WE GAZED INTO
OUR CRYSTAL BALL TO
GLIMPSE THESE FOUR
RIPPED-FROM-THE-
FUTURE PROTOTYPES
OF DEVICES THAT
APPLE COULD MAKE IN
THE YEARS AHEAD.
TODAY’S
TOMORROW’S
MAGIC
REALITY
T
M
R
maclife.com JAN•11 23maclife.com JAN•11 23worldmagsworldmags
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26.
Rejected PRototyPe Idea 36b: An Apple throwing stAr. the tsA fAmously seized the only known
prototypes of Apple’s cutting-edge technology, proving cupertino wAs too shArp for its own good.
24 JAN•11 maclife.com
Applevision
Whether it’s a lovely
3.5-inch Retina display
on an iPhone 4 or the
absolutely stunning
27-inch Cinema Display,
Apple’s rightly famous
for putting gorgeous visuals ﬁrst. But they’d
never bother with a device as mundane as
a regular television set. No, when Apple
moves into the living room to capitalize
on the snowballing convergence of the
internet, gaming, apps, computing, and plain
old movie-watching, the least signiﬁcant
thing the AppleVision will do is deliver a
pretty picture.
But let’s start with that. The AppleVision’s
65-inch P-IPS display will offer 30-bit color
depth capable of displaying more than a
billion colors. That alone will make it prettier
than any picture currently on the market.
On to “the magic.” The gateway to the
AppleVision’s coolest feature will lurk in
a pinhole at the top of the display, where
a wide-angle camera and a mic will be
concealed. Of course they’ll be good for
FaceTime chats right from your couch
(just like the Jetsons!), but like Microsoft’s
recently released Kinect (an add-on to
the Xbox 360), the camera’s continuously
projected infrared pattern will be constantly
reading and analyzing the scene in front of
the AppleVision. That means it’ll recognize
You won’t be able to tear your eyes away from Apple’s
superpowered television. By rAy AguilerA
you when you walk into the room, turning
on your default home screen—or reacting
to your kids’ arrival by activating whatever
parental controls you’ve set. You’ll simply
speak a command like, “Play The Hobbit” to
cue up Peter Jackson’s latest masterpiece,
or you’ll gesture with your hand, making a
swiping motion in the air to ﬂip through the
menus and ﬁnd something else to watch,
an app to load up, a game to play, or simply
just emails and tweets to answer. There’s no
remote to master—just a “touchscreen in
the air” interface that will make AppleVision
a pleasure to use.
Behind the screen, AppleVision will pack
in 4TB of RAID-enabled storage—HD
movies are big!—as well as dual Core i11
Intel processors and 256GB of RAM. Since
AppleVision runs iOS 6, you’ll be able to just
sync a Bluetooth keyboard/trackpad combo,
and you’ve got the biggest iPad ever built.
Yes, the AppleVision is an entertainment
powerhouse. You’ll be able to access content
stored locally, on your network, and in the
cloud. And if you still need more media, the
AppleVision will connect (over Wi-Max, of
course) to streaming video from Netﬂix,
Amazon, Hulu, and of course the iTunes
Store. It will, quite simply, be the beautiful,
Jonny Ive–designed display packed with the
turbo-charged Apple TV functions that we’ve
always dreamed of.
Built-in Bluetooth
and wi-max
networking will
keep your
Applevision and
your iphone in sync
without all those
annoying cables.
By gesturing in
the air, you’ll be
able to shrink
down your video
and pop up a
safari window to
look up the actor
whose name
is on the tip of
your tongue.
2012tHe FUtURe oF aPPLe deSIGN
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28.
THE FUTURE OF APPLE DESIGN
We’ve found that parallax barrier
displays tend to excel at showing
objects receding into the background,
rather than objects jumping out of the
screen. So the iPad 3D will come with
desktop themes that “embed” unique
spatial effects and animations beneath
the screen’s surface. The theme you
see here mimics a swimming pool. Tap
the icon of an app you want to load,
and animated 3D waves ripple forth.
26 JAN•11 maclife.com
iPAD 3D
The world has caught
3D fever. It’s in our TVs,
game consoles, Blu-
ray players, and movie
theaters. In due time, 3D
features will probably
even appear in our shampoo and breakfast
cereal (”No, Mommy—I want Cap’n Crunch
3D!”). Yet Apple seems conspicuously
ambivalent about all the 3D hype. Are Steve’s
engineers really treating 3D as a passing
fad? Of course not. They’re just going to wait
until 2013 in order to do it right.
The iPad 3D’s dimensions will approximate
those of the current iPad we know and love.
Height and width will be 9.5 inches and 7.5
inches respectively, but the thickness of
the tablet will slim down from a half-inch to
a shockingly thin one-ﬁfth of an inch. It’s
difﬁcult to reach these svelte dimensions
under any circumstances, yet Apple will also
ﬁnagle a 3D display on top of the device’s
dainty circuit-board sandwich. And you
won’t need cumbersome glasses to enjoy
the 3D magic.
Don’t scoff. In early 2011, Nintendo will
release its 3DS, a handheld gaming system
that uses “parallax barrier” technology to
render surprisingly effective 3D imaging
effects—all without the nerd glasses. We
believe that Apple will be implementing
an even more mature iteration of this
Apple will refresh its tablet to be ﬂatter than
ever—except when it’s not ﬂat at all. By Jon PhilliPS
technology, which, like all 3D display
systems, uses stereoscopic imaging to create
the illusion of depth.
In a typical 3D viewing scenario (say,
watching Avatar in the theater), the screen
projects two different images—each of the
same object or scene but from a slightly
different perspective. In the theater, your
3D glasses ﬁlter these projections in a way
that guarantees one image hits your left
eye and the other image hits your right eye.
Your brain then synthesizes the two images
into a 3D spatial representation. In a parallax
barrier scheme—like what you’ll ﬁnd in the
Nintendo 3DS and the iPad 3D—the screen
actually aims different sets of pixels to hit
one eye or the other. In essence, one pixel
set is angled toward your left eye, the other
is angled toward your right eye, and a virtual
barrier ensures each eye sees the correct
set. When the system works, the technology
is remarkably effective and no glasses
are necessary.
Now, granted, in a parallax barrier system
you have to hold the screen at just the right
viewing angle and distance from your eyes.
But we trust that by 2013, Apple will have
a workaround for this dilemma (because,
hey, it’s Apple). From gaming apps to HD
video content, Apple’s most novel tablet
will deliver 3D to your entire mobile
entertainment experience.
REjEcTED PROTOTyPE IDEA 4-132c: iBike WiTh ioS inTegrATion. liABiliTy concernS hAlTeD furTher
concePTuAlizATion When We reAlizeD riDerS Were more likely To PlAy Angry BirDS ThAn Survive eAch TriP.
2013
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29.
Note the edge-to-edge display—
the black border around the
screen’s perimeter is gone! If you
want the border back, just push in
the same toggle switch that locks
screen orientation in the current
iPad. You’ll lose some screen real
estate (and pixels), but you’ll gain
a place to put your grubby mitts.
The iPad 3D will increase 2D screen resolution from a current spec of 1024x768 to roughly
1280x1024—and, yes, that 2D resolution will engage dynamically when non-3D content is
displayed. Because it’ll have to split its horizontal pixel grid in half for 3D viewing, the 3D
resolution will be an effective grid of roughly 640x768. We write “roughly” because the
rounded edges decrease the display’s total pixel count. Never heard of an LCD grid that
follows a gentle curve? Toshiba Matsushita announced this technology in October 2007.
Say farewell to “Slide to unlock”—the iPad 3D’s entire
screen will serve as a biometric security reader. Just touch anywhere
on the screen, and it’ll scan your ﬁngerprint and wake the device from
sleep. Depending on what level of security you deﬁne in Settings, the
system can grant access to your hands and your hands only. Want
your kids to have an open door to some apps but not others—or
need a guest account for easier sharing? Simple. The tablet supports
multiple user accounts for registered ﬁngerprints with full parental
controls, and you can turn on a guest mode that lets anyone access
what you deﬁne as “safe territory.”
maclife.com JAN•11 27
rejected PrototyPe idea 17-78c: iFIT FITNess TraINer. IF NINTeNDO CaN geT us IN shaPe WITh The WII,
aPPLe CaN geT us TO ruN MaraThONs! BuT ON seCOND ThOughT…26.2 MILes Is Far.
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30.
28 JAN•11 maclife.com
THE FUTURE OF APPLE DESIGN
2015
Rejected PRototyPe Idea 783d: aPPle sewIng kIt. came to an abRuPt halt when we RemembeRed
one of steve jobs’ most common comPlaInts—”too many buttons!”
macbook eco
Think of the MacBook
Eco as a hybrid car
you can toss in your
backpack. Just as a
Prius is powered by a
combination of gasoline
and electricity, the MacBook Eco will stay
running with a mashup of technologies that
includes solar energy, piezoelectric power,
and wireless electricity.
First off, its black coating isn’t just for
aesthetics. That’s solar paint, a multilayered
mixture of nano-sized dye-sensitive cells and
titanium dioxide that can coat any material,
going on like paint and drying as tiny—think
microscopic—solar cells. Even in 2010, it can
harness more of the sun’s energy (up to 40
percent) than traditional photovoltaic cells
(closer to 18 percent). That performance also
comes at a lower cost, according to NextGen
Solar, the startup bringing this technology
to market. You can’t just waltz down to
Lowe’s and pick up a gallon today, but
imagine what could happen if a huge buyer
like Apple got on board. Plus, since this
paint works on so many surfaces—even
Apple’s laptops will lose the power cord and go even greener.
by susIe ochs
windows—Apple won’t have to restrict its
creative industrial design.
Of course, computer use usually happens
indoors, so solar probably won’t be enough
for anyone except maybe Tarzan. But the
highly portable MacBook Eco will also use
kinetic energy harvested by your footsteps,
courtesy of piezoelectric pads on the bottom
of a pair of Nike Piezo cross-trainers.
Piezoelectric technology exists today too.
Piezoelectric ﬂoor tiles in Tokyo Station and
Shibuya Station in Japan collect energy from
the footfalls of nearly 3 million people daily,
where it’s stored in capacitors and used
to power the lights and ticket gates. And
researchers at MIT, Princeton, and Louisiana
Tech have been experimenting with adding
ﬂexible piezoelectric materials into shoes.
If “footpower” makes you think “hamster
wheel,” rest assured this is far more
science-y than that. Basically—and this is
highly simpliﬁed—the piezoelectric element
is made up of an asymmetrical array of
cells of crystalline substances. In our case,
this takes the form of a foil layer in the sole
of the shoe, as well as a thicker pad in the
heel. When hit by an external force—your
heel striking the ground or the sole bending
during a footstep—those cells realign
themselves in a regular pattern, which
develops electrostatic potential. So far, the
output is roughly on par with a lithium coin-
cell battery, but by the Eco’s debut, it’ll have
taken great strides—pun totally intended.
To keep the electrons ﬂowing, the Eco
also has a piezoelectric layer underneath
the keyboard to capture the energy of every
keystroke you make. So go ahead and type
hard, angry emails—you’re saving the Earth
with every Caps Lock rant.
And don’t worry about an ugly 20th-
century wire tethering your shoes to your
Mac. The Eco will use wireless charging,
which will beam the power harvested in your
shoes up to your MacBook by converting the
electricity to radio waves and transmitting
them by RF. A handy graph on the screen
shows you at a glance how much of your
juice is coming from each source, letting
you combine technologies to keep your
hybrid MacBook Eco cruising down the
information superhighway.
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31.
maclife.com JAN•11 29
No wires? Of course
not—this is the
future, after all.
Electricity generated
by the shoes is sent
via radio frequency to
the laptop. Wirelessly.
Since Apple’s already
partnered with Nike
for the Nike + iPod
ﬁtness products,
they’re natural
partners for the
energy-harvesting
Nike Piezo shoes.
“Solar paint” sounds
made up, we know,
but it actually
exists and is even
more efﬁcient than
traditional solar
panels.
Hit a function key for an at-a-glance
look at where your power is coming
from—the solar-paint coating, the
Nike Piezo shoes, or the piezoelectrics
embedded under the keyboard.
TYPE HARD
BECAUSE YOUR
KEYSTROKES
ALSO PRODUCE
ELECTRICITY.
PIEZOELECTRICS
ARE AWESOME!!!1!
Rejected PRototyPe Idea 22-321c: APPLE BOARD gAME. BUT If SPECULATION MOUNTED THAT APPLE WAS WORKINg
ON NEW BOARD gAMES, JOBS WOULD JUST EMAIL A fAN TO SAY “fRANKLY, WE’RE ALREADY CREATINg A MONOPOLY.”
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32.
30 JAN•11 maclife.com
Rejected PRototyPe Idea 66m: iFilter. this soFtware would prioritize your content consumption—
like Genius For all your media. But then we realized…who’d want a soup nazi For your down time?
iscroll
Today, it takes
commitment to be wired
everywhere you go.
Lugging around a bag
crammed with—at a
minimum—an iPhone,
MacBook, and headphones sometimes makes
us feel like we’re schlepping more than a
sherpa. Come 2017, the iScroll will not only
free us all from those burdens, but it’ll also
wire us up like never before.
When you ﬁrst pick one up, you might
mistake it for a tall, skinny iPhone from ﬁve
or six years before—but that impression
will change when you pull on the right side.
A bendable FOLED (ﬂexible organic light
emitting diode) touchscreen will unspool and
ﬂicker to life in glorious 1440p. This is not
just wishful thinking—Sony and Samsung
have been tinkering with FOLEDs for years
now, and while they’re awfully expensive
today, those prices are expected to plummet
fast. Touchscreen versions don’t exist yet to
our knowledge, but we trust that Apple can
crack that nut.
Back to this awesome bendable display.
What better way to browse the web, watch
a ﬂick, or scan a map on its enjoyably large,
8x11-inch surface? Wireless earbuds will pipe
the audio right into your skull, and the non-
bendable Multi-Touch display will house a 24-
hour battery, 5G/Wi-Max radio, 1TB of RAM,
and a 10MP camera for videos, photos, and
The love child of the iPhone and the MacBook will revolutionize
mobile computing and entertainment. By paul curthoys
FaceTime calls. Knitting it all together will be
Hyena, Apple’s sleek new operating system
that, in a long-expected move, will merge the
old Mac OS and iOS. To ensure privacy, the
back side of the display will be blank silver,
save for the softly glowing Apple logo in
the center.
But for some tasks like writing or video
editing, you can’t beat the laptop’s form
factor. In those moments, you’ll tap a
hardware button along the side to trigger
a memory-plastic effect that’ll stiffen the
bendable display, kinking it about a
third of the way along its length
into a familiar, MacBook-
esque shape. The
non-bendable
display will
become
a trackpad,
a keyboard will
come up on the not-
bendable-anymore display,
and you can get cracking.
In what might seem like a downside
today, the iScroll will have no permanent
onboard storage—everything will sync
constantly to and from the cloud, deploying
the rock-solid MobileMe3 service to keep
your latest data instantly available no
matter which device you use.
Yes, even if you’re still stuck in an AT&T
contract...
tHe FUtURe oF aPPLe deSIGN
2017
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33.
maclife.com JAN•11 31
This roll-out,
bendable
FOLED
touchscreen will
be perfect for
reading maps,
perusing the
e-newspaper,
or just tucking
into a movie,
app, or game.
When in laptop mode,
the iScroll’s main
touchscreen will
become a huge Magic
Trackpad—and yes,
it’ll know the difference
between intentional
gestures and just
resting your wrists to
use the keyboard.
America is big. So
even in 2017, we’ll
still encounter
places with no
signal. But when
we return to
“civilization,”
the iScroll will
automatically sync
its 1TB of RAM with
your permanent
cloud storage.
Advances in
memory plastics
will allow
the iScroll’s
bendable display
to stiffen on
command,
converting it
into the airiest
MacBook yet.
Rejected PRototyPe Idea 135-78: A TOuch-cApAciTivE kEyBOARD WiTh SWiTchABLE FuncTiOnS.
BuT OuR MOTTO “ALL OF ThE ABiLiTy, nOnE OF ThE TAcTiLE inpuT” kiLLED iT in iTS inFAncy.
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34.
DIY APPLE LEAKS
No visit to Apple’s future would be complete without fuzzy “spy shots” of upcoming Apple gear. And of course, there’s a long
history of Photoshopped fakes getting the Twitternet chattering. While occasional product leaks happen—remember the iPhone 4
brouhaha last spring?—Apple is a master of controlling what gets out and what doesn’t. But Apple fans are so hungry for details,
it’s no wonder that fakes can quickly gain traction. And rolling out your own Apple fake is surprisingly easy. Just follow our step-by-
step guide to grabbing your 15 seconds of internet fame. BY ROBERTO BALDWIN & FLORENCE ION
How to fuel the rumor mill with your own fake Apple tech!
1Snap some pics of
existing Apple gear
on a desk under bad
ﬂuorescent lighting; this
lends authenticity by
suggesting a secret test
lab. Conspicuously yet
casually include other
Apple products, like a
keyboard or trackpad.
Remember, it’s a “spy
shot,” so the fewer
megapixels, the better.
iPhone cameras are a
natural choice.
2The Marquee tool
and layers in your
favorite image editor
are your friend. Select
deﬁning features like
buttons or screens,
then paste them into
new layers. Next go
back to your original
layer and select the
body of the product,
stretching it and
contorting it into a
new and interesting
form factor.
3Take a photo of
your manipulated
image onscreen. This
throws off the colors
a bit more and injects
the low-ﬁ image quality
you’re looking for. Save
the image as a JPEG
at the lowest possible
setting for even more
authentic spy-shot blur
and distortion. For extra
points, use HoudahGeo
or a similar tool to
change geotag data on
your photo to Apple HQ
in Cupertino.
4Post your fake on
an internet forum.
Claim you got it from a
friend in California—or
your cousin, who works
for a chip maker you
can’t name. In a matter
of hours, every high-
trafﬁc Apple blog will be
reporting your fake as
news. Get your friends,
grandparents, second
cousins, and LARP
brethren to retweet it.
5Enjoy your internet
celebrity while it
lasts—which won’t be
long. We hear Apple
just ﬁled a patent for a
thing that does some
stuff, and it’s magical.
That will surely be the
new blog hotness in
three…two…one…
Look! It’s the long-
fabled 7-inch iPad!
Use layers in your
photo editor to
manipulate part of
your image.
32 JAN•11 maclife.com
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36.
Have it when
you need it,
dock it when
you don’t.
The ﬁrst Bluetooth headset designed to ﬁt your
iPhone 4 without compromising your style
T
iP
www.mogostore.com
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37.
Now that digital cameras are cheap and
ubiquitous, we can snap, snap, snap
away—which comes back to haunt us
when we end up shooting hundreds of
frames over the course of an afternoon.
Storage space is cheap, but managing
an ever-expanding collection of
thousands of images can make you long
for the days when you took pictures on
ﬁlm, 24 at a time.
No matter whether
you’re rocking a
professional-grade
DSLR or you shoot your
snaps with an iPhone,
having a capable
method of organizing your collection
and editing your photos is essential.
iPhoto comes with every new Mac and
it does a lot, but it isn’t the be-all-end-
all for every user. So we looked at ﬁve
other applications that can help you
corral and edit your photos; then we
collected 10 solid tips for making those
photos look their best, no matter which
app you’re using. You’ll never regret
ﬁlling up a memory card again.
BY ROB LAWTON
maclife.com JAN•11 35
HOW TO MASTER PHOTO ORGANIZING
& EDITING ON YOUR MAC
IT’S A
H P
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38.
36 JAN•11 maclife.com
PART ONE:
CHOOSING YOUR APPMany use iPhoto just “because it’s there.” Alternatives exist, but some are pretty expensive. Before you take the plunge, peruse these pros and cons.
iPHOTO ’11
iPhoto ’11 just arrived (see p60), bringing better Facebook integration,
along with an enhanced full-screen mode, better photo books, and new
letterpress cards. (Books and cards must be ordered; you can’t print
them yourself.) Beyond these enhancements, iPhoto is still the simple
but effective organizer we know and love.
Your photos are imported into a central tamper-proof library, which
lives as a single ﬁle on your hard disk. Once your photos are in the
library, you can organize them into albums; carry out basic image
enhancements; upload them to your MobileMe, Flickr, and Facebook
accounts; email them to your friends; and create some spectacular-
looking slideshows.
Like many Apple apps, iPhoto combines simplicity with hidden depths.
It’s never going to replace the likes of Aperture and Lightroom, but it gets
you farther than you expect. The editing tools might not be advanced, but
they do a good job, and the Auto Enhance button can transform average-
looking snaps in an instant.
The Faces and Places features
work pretty well too, though each
requires you to put in a little time
and effort to get the best results.
The face recognition is good but not
infallible, and if you don’t have a GPS-
enabled camera, it can be tedious to
enter location data for your photos
manually.
The bottom line. iPhoto (part
of iLife ’11, $49, apple.com) is best
for anyone who uses photography
socially rather than professionally.
PHOTOSHOP CS5
Photoshop is the granddaddy of all photo-editing applications. The
name itself has become a byword for photo trickery, and it’s a standard
tool for professional photographers, artists, and designers everywhere.
And yet Adobe still ﬁnds new ways to improve it. CS5 is now a 64-bit
application, though you do need Snow Leopard and lots of RAM to
exploit the extra processing power. The new Content-Aware Fill feature
can effectively cover up unwanted objects by drawing in detail from
their surroundings, and new selection-reﬁnement tools make it easier
to extract difﬁcult outlines (like human hair) from a background.
Photoshop’s high dynamic range tool has been redesigned to be both
easier to use and more powerful, and a new HDR Toner feature lets
you create the HDR “look” from a single image, where true HDR uses
at least three. The Adobe Camera Raw plug-in uses a new processing
system to offer improved deﬁnition, and you’ll ﬁnd more sophisticated
noise-reduction tools too.
There isn’t much that Photoshop can’t do, but you will need to
know quite a lot about image editing to get the most from it. And
photographers will probably have to invest in a separate photo-
cataloguing tool (like Lightroom or
Aperture)—although Photoshop comes with
the Adobe Bridge ﬁle browser, it’s soon out
of its depth with big photo collections.
The bottom line. Photoshop CS5 ($699,
free trial, adobe.com) is best for pro
photographers and enthusiasts who have
advanced far beyond the basics.
iPhoto ’11’s redesigned Edit
screen is on the basic side but
still gets the job done.
Photoshop stays on top because
it’s always improving.
PROS
n Simple, fast, and
effective image
enhancements
n Intuitive and efﬁcient
photo-organizing tools
n Superb slideshow
wtemplates
n Facebook and Flickr
integration; Faces and
Places
n Received 4.5 stars from
Mac|Life (see p60)
CONS
n Basic editing tools for
quick ﬁxes and nice
effects—but little else
n iPhoto uses its own
storage system, which
can be hard to fathom
PROS
n Still the most powerful
image editor of all
n Industry-standard tool
for professionals
n Great new Content-
Aware Fill and HDR
features
n New RAW conversion
tools
n Received 4.5 stars from
Mac|Life (Jul/10, p60)
CONS
n Very expensive
n Steep learning curve
IT’S A SNAP! MASTER PHOTO ORGANIZING & EDITING ON YOUR MAC
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Elements’ Guided Edits mode
actually teaches you editing
tricks as you use it.
Aperture’s interface reminds us
of iPhoto on steroids.
PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS 9
Elements is the amateur version of Photoshop, and it’s designed to
offer a lot of Photoshop’s features in a much friendlier format for
novices. Version 9 is a dramatic step forward for Mac owners, not only
because it has some very useful improvements in its own right, but also
because it now comes with a Mac version of the Organizer app, which
was previously only available in the Windows version (Mac users got
Adobe Bridge instead).
The Organizer is like an application in itself, storing all your photos
in one centralized library. You can tag your photos with keywords,
organize them into albums, and even “stack” related images so that, for
example, modiﬁed versions are always kept alongside the originals.
Elements is designed with beginners and nonprofessionals in mind,
so you can enhance your photos with the easy-to-use Quick Fix tools
or the more advanced Guided Edits. In the Full Edit mode, though,
it’s a much more powerful program
than you might imagine, and many
of the things that you may think you
need Photoshop for can be done
perfectly well in Elements, including
layer masks. Best of all, at under $80,
it’s a mere fraction of the price of
Photoshop CS5.
The bottom line. Photoshop
Elements 9 ($79.99, free trial,
adobe.com) is for beginners and
enthusiasts who want quick results
without complex tools.
PROS
n Great for starting out and
learning as you go
n Comes with Adobe’s
excellent Organizer app
n Clever “Photomerge”
technology for
panoramas and other
image-blending tasks
n Now supports layer masks
n Received 4.5 stars from
Mac|Life (Dec/10, p64)
CONS
n Choice of editing modes
and tools can become
confusing
n Lacks a few high-end
Photoshop tools that you
may eventually need
APERTURE 3
Aperture is one of a new generation of “nondestructive” image editor-
slash-organizers. This means the enhancements you make to your
picture are stored in the Aperture library and not applied directly to the
image ﬁles, which are kept safe and untouched as “master” images. The
advantage of this is that you can always go back and change or undo
the edits you’ve made to your photos, but the downside is that you’re
relying on a single database for all the hundreds (or even thousands)
of image adjustments you’ve made. As of version 3, Aperture is now
a very powerful image-editor as well as a cataloguing tool. You can
apply both global and localized image adjustments, and while you’ll still
need Photoshop for layers and montages, Aperture can do pretty much
everything else. It’s easy to set Aperture up to use Photoshop as an
external editor, too, and it handles “round-tripping” perfectly, storing
Photoshop-edited ﬁles alongside the originals in your library.
Aperture’s real strength, though, is its cataloguing. It’s quicker
and slicker than its main rival Lightroom at both handling and
displaying large numbers of images,
and its system of projects, folders, and
albums gives you great ﬂexibility in the
way you organize your photos without
forcing you into a particular ﬁling
system on your computer.
The bottom line. Aperture ($199,
free trial, apple.com) hits the sweet spot
for professional photographers and
keen enthusiasts looking to upgrade
from iPhoto.
PROS
n New and improved
photo-enhancement
tools
n Flexible and powerful
photo organization
n Fast thumbnail display
and searching tools
n Excellent full-screen
browsing and editing
modes
n Received 4.5 stars from
Mac|Life (May/10 p58)
CONS
n Lightroom still has the
edge for photo editing
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40.
38 JAN•11 maclife.com
PART ONE: CHOOSING YOUR APP (continued)
ADOBE LIGHTROOM 3
Lightroom is Adobe’s answer to Aperture: a photo organizer and editor
that stores all your photo data (including image adjustments) in a single
database—your photos are stored separately in regular folders on your
hard drive. Adobe’s Camera Raw software is built in, so you can browse
and edit RAW ﬁles just as effectively as JPEGs. In fact, Lightroom’s
editing tools are its main strength, allowing you to carry out a whole
host of basic adjustments, as well as more sophisticated alterations
such as graduated ﬁlter effects and localized “painted” adjustments.
Because it’s a nondestructive editor, the original image ﬁles remain
unaltered, and you can go back and experiment with different
adjustments at any time.
Lightroom’s photo-organizing tools aren’t quite as impressive,
though. Running on the same hardware, it’s noticeably slower than
Aperture at displaying and scrolling through thumbnails, and the dark-
toned interface feels more cluttered, too. Frustratingly, the
system for organizing Collections (albums, in other words) is
entirely separate to that for displaying the folders where the
photos are stored on your hard drive. Lightroom’s organizing
tools are in some ways more obvious
and direct than Aperture’s, but
they’re also more limiting.
The bottom line. Lightroom 3
($299, free trial, adobe.com)
will appeal to professional
photographers and keen
enthusiasts with fast Macs
and huge photo collections.
PICASA 3.6
Picasa is to iPhoto what Android smartphones are to the iPhone.
It’s Google’s version of an all-in-one photo-cataloguing and -editing
program, and while it’s been around on the Windows side for a while,
it’s only recently arrived on the Mac.
Where iPhoto imports pictures into its own library, Picasa works like
a ﬁle browser, showing you the contents of your picture folders, and
updating them automatically if you change or add to your pictures.
Photos are displayed in a single catalog, though, so it’s one step ahead
of Adobe Bridge, and Picasa is extremely fast at searching, even when
you have tens of thousands of pictures.
The photo-enhancement tools are good, too. They’re not particularly
sophisticated, and they certainly don’t rival a proper image-editing
program like Photoshop or even Elements, but you can do some clever
and useful things such as geotagging, face detection, and graduated
ﬁlter effects, as well as regular, everyday tone and color enhancements.
Picasa also integrates with Google’s free web albums, automatically
synchronizing any changes you make online or in the
Picasa app. Compared to other Mac applications, though,
Picasa is pretty odd, both in the way it displays folders
and in the design and operation of its image-ﬁxing tools.
But hey, it’s free!
The bottom line. Picasa 3 (free, picasa.google.com)
will appeal to cheapskates,
Google fanatics, and any
iPhoto defectors looking for a
fast, simple, and free photo-
cataloguing tool.
Lightroom’s dark interface lets
your photos pop but also feels
cluttered at times.
If you can get used to its
quirks, Picasa packs a
lot of functionality into a
free application.
PROS
n Excellent image-
enhancement tools
n Very well-integrated
with Photoshop (as you’d
expect from Adobe)
n Support for the widest
range of RAW formats of
any photo app
n Received 4 stars from
Mac|Life (Sep/10, p58)
CONS
n Thumbnail display can be
sluggish
n Folders and Collections
don’t integrate at all
PROS
n Displays photos in their
original folder locations
n Effective image-
enhancement tools
n Extremely fast keyword
searches
n Integration with Google’s
web albums
CONS
n Quirky layout and
controls
IT’S A SNAP! MASTER PHOTO ORGANIZING & EDITING ON YOUR MAC
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42.
1. KEEP YOUR ORIGINALS SAFE
When you edit your photos, always work on a copy, not the original.
You never know when you might need that original, either because
you’ve messed up or you want to apply a completely new effect. In
ordinary image editors, you should get into the habit of doing a “Save
As” as soon as you’ve done any work on the photo. In nondestructive
programs like Aperture, Lightroom, and iPhoto, the original image will
always be available, but it needs a bit of digging out, so even here it
can be useful to make a duplicate just so that the original is there right
alongside it as a before-and-after reference. You should also keep
backups, and with the advent of Time Machine, there’s just no excuse
not to. If you’re using a pre-Leopard version of the Mac OS, you could
use the older Backup utility instead. Alternatively, check out your
editor’s help ﬁle—many programs have a built-in backup option.
2. FOLDERS AND FILENAMES
The ﬁlenames used by digital cameras don’t mean much to humans, but
you can rename them once they’re on your Mac. Most organizing apps
have simple batch-renaming tools (if not, grab the free Rename utility
from pathossoftware.com), so just choose a system that makes sense.
This could be as simple as a batch number followed by a photo number,
which keeps them in chronological order.
Plus, digital cameras usually reset their ﬁle numbering system when
you erase or format the memory card. So when you transfer another
batch of pictures to your Mac, they may have the same ﬁlenames
as photos you’ve already got. Not a problem if they’re in separate
folders, but if you try to move them into the same location, you could
inadvertently overwrite an earlier set.
Once you dump your photos into a cataloguing tool like iPhoto or
Aperture, you don’t have to worry about folder and ﬁlenames—just use
the software to create album names and photo titles.
3. HISTOGRAMS AND LEVELS
Histograms look technical, but they’re actually easy to understand, and
can tell you very quickly what’s wrong with a photo, whether you can ﬁx
it, and how to do so. Just about all image editors offer a Levels dialog,
and this should always be your ﬁrst stop when trying to ﬁx a problem.
Diagnosing histogram/levels problems is pretty straightforward. The
histogram is a chart showing how many pixels there are at different
brightness levels, from solid black (at the left edge) to brilliant white
(at the right). If the histogram doesn’t quite reach the left-hand end, it
means the photo doesn’t have any true black tones, so it’s going to look
pale and washed-out. If the histogram doesn’t quite reach the right end,
it means the picture doesn’t have any true white tones, so it’s going to
look dingy. You just drag the levels sliders to line up with the ends of
the histogram, which expands the histogram to ﬁll the full tonal range.
This boosts the contrast, saturation, and overall vividness, and can
often ﬁx problem photos at a stroke.
On the other hand, if either end of the histogram is a solid black
line—which means it’s “clipped”—there’s nothing you can do. You
often get this if the photo has been overexposed or underexposed,
and it means that the shadows or highlights are so blown out in some
portion of the photo that an image editor can’t save the day. But at
least you’ll know what’s happened and be more careful with the camera
exposure next time. And although a clipped histogram is bad news, it
tells you not to waste any more time trying to ﬁx the unﬁxable.
Built-in
batch
renaming is
handy, but
if you use
iPhoto you
don’t have
to bother.
Nudging the levels sliders in from the edges of the histogram can do
wonders to ﬁx your photos.
Back up your Mac, including your photos. Losing them is a heart-
crushing experience we hope you never have.
40 JAN•11 maclife.com
PART TWO:
EDITING YOUR PHOTOSSometimes the difference between an image that’ll never leave your hard drive and a gorgeous, frame-worthy photo is a few simple tweaks.
IT’S A SNAP! MASTER PHOTO ORGANIZING & EDITING ON YOUR MAC
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43.
4. SHARE YOUR PHOTOS!
The problem with digital photography is that your pictures never have
a physical form—unless you do something about it, all they’re ever
going to be is ﬁles on your hard drive. Printing can be expensive, but
if you send your best shots to an online lab, it’s much cheaper than
doing it yourself, and less work. All you do is upload them and then wait
for them to arrive in the mail. You can also get enlargements of your
favorite pictures, and the sizes available go way beyond anything you
could print at home.
To share photos without spending a dime, create an online album
using free services like Google’s Picasa Web Albums, Flickr, or Facebook.
And don’t forget slideshows using Lightroom, Picasa, Aperture, and even
iPhoto, which has amazing built-in slideshow themes. Even better,
you can export your slideshows as movies, then upload to YouTube.
Taking pictures is only
half the process—sharing
them afterwards is the
real point!
7. LENS CORRECTIONS
Sometimes your camera’s lens causes problems, like distortion (where
straight lines near the edge of the picture appear to bow outwards),
chromatic aberration (color fringing around the edges of objects), and
vignetting (where pictures are darker in the corners).
But these can be ﬁxed. Adobe introduced automatic lens corrections
in Photoshop CS5, which means the software identiﬁes the camera
and lens used to take the picture and matches it up with a specially
prepared lens-correction proﬁle. Not all camera models are supported
yet, and it’s designed for digital SLRs rather than compacts, but even
if your camera isn’t on the list, you can still apply these corrections
manually. It’s surprising how much difference this makes.
Other programs have similar tools, but may not ﬁx all three problems.
Photoshop can
do it all within the
Lens Correction
dialog, plus ﬁx
converging
verticals and
other perspective
issues.
5. CREATIVE CROPPING
We’re quick to experiment with crazy effects, but how often do we crop
our photos? And yet it’s really important to think about your picture’s
composition right at the start. Do you need all that extra detail at the
edges? Is it straight? Would it look more exciting on a slant? This is one
time you get to use your creative skills when editing, instead of getting
hung up on sliders and percentages. Remember a few guidelines, like
the rule of thirds, wherein you mentally divide your photo into a 3x3
grid and position the subjects on those lines and where they intersect.
The other reason for cropping is to achieve certain aspect ratios, or
the width of the picture compared to the height. The aspect ratios of
common print sizes are often different from the aspect ratio of your
camera’s sensor. Most compact digicams have a 4:3 aspect ratio, but
4x6 prints have a wider 3:2 aspect ratio, which means the top and
bottom edges of your
shots will be cut off.
So if you’re producing
ﬁxed-size prints,
cropping your photos
ﬁrst means you get
to choose what’s
cropped off, not the
photo lab.
6. NONDESTRUCTIVE EDITING
Nondestructive editing means that the changes you make to a photo
can be undone at any time. Some programs do this as a matter of
course, including iPhoto, Picasa, Lightroom, and Aperture. The changes
you make are stored in a database, not applied permanently to the ﬁle.
Photoshop and Elements, though, lie somewhere in the middle. For
example, you can apply a levels or saturation adjustment directly to the
image layer (destructive), or use an adjustment layer (nondestructive)
which sits on top of the image layer and changes the way it looks, but
doesn’t touch the pixels themselves.
Direct image adjustments are permanent. But with adjustment layers,
you can re-open them and ﬁnd the settings exactly as you left them,
ready to be changed. The trick with Photoshop is to make all of your
adjustments as
nondestructive
as possible, using
adjustment layers
rather than regular
adjustments, and
layer masks rather
than selections.
Whatever you do,
try to leave your
options open.
MobileMe’s galleries are gorgeous and an
easy upload from iPhoto or Aperture. Spice up a standard snapshot with an interesting crop.
Make your Photoshop edits on adjustment layers
and leave your pixels alone. Your photo should reﬂect what your eyes see,
not necessarily what your lens saw.
maclife.com JAN•11 41worldmagsworldmags
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44.
PART TWO:
EDITING YOUR PHOTOS (continued)
9. DODGING AND BURNING
In the old days, photographers used dodging and burning to enhance
their prints in the darkroom. Dodging meant shading certain parts
of the print under the enlarger to make them come out lighter, while
burning was exposing some areas for longer to make them come out
darker. You might “burn in” the sky in a landscape shot, for example, or
“dodge” your subject’s face in a portrait to make it come out lighter.
Nowadays, dodging and burning seems to get overlooked as a
basic image-enhancement technique, but it’s every bit as effective
as it always was and so much easier to do using software. Photoshop
and Elements both have powerful Dodge and Burn tools, and you can
achieve a similar effect with Aperture’s Adjustment Brushes.
It’s sometimes difﬁcult to know where to start, but certain basic
techniques always work well. For a start, some deliberate darkening
around the edges of the picture effectively draws attention to the main
subject. Or if you’ve got ugly areas of dense shadow, a little lightening
(dodging) can bring out the detail. You can use dodging and burning to
direct viewers’ attention to what you want them to look at or as an aid
to composition, balancing the light and dark areas to produce a more
pleasing arrangement of shapes and tones.
10. SOFTWARE WITH STACKING
A number of photo-cataloguing programs can “stack” (or group)
similar photos so that normally all you see is the top photo, but you
can expand the stack to see all the others. This means your screen
isn’t cluttered up with multiple versions of the same image—and as
your photo collection grows, keeping the clutter down becomes a very
pressing problem. These stacking tools are equally useful when you
produce edited versions of your pictures since the new image can then
be stacked alongside the original.
The simpler photo-cataloguing programs like iPhoto and Picasa don’t
support stacking, and this is one of the main reasons for upgrading
to something more powerful. The new Organizer application with
Photoshop Elements 9 does support stacking, as do Lightroom and
Aperture. Stacking is one of those features that doesn’t seem like a big
deal at ﬁrst, but becomes essential once you’ve used it for a while.
8. WORKING WITH RAW FILES
All digital SLRs and many high-end compact cameras can shoot RAW
ﬁles as an alternative to regular JPEGs, and it’s well worth doing. RAW
ﬁles are unprocessed images, saved before the camera has carried out
any white balance, contrast, photo styles, and other adjustments. That
means you can choose what settings you want to apply later on.
It’s not just about preserving your options, though. RAW ﬁles contain
a wider brightness range, so it’s often possible to recover detail from
highlights or shadowed areas that would otherwise have been lost.
And depending on the RAW-conversion software you use, you may get
sharper, less noisy images too.
Most image-editing and cataloguing apps can now open and edit
RAW ﬁles directly, but the results will be slightly different. Adobe
Camera Raw, used in Lightroom, Photoshop, and Elements, doesn’t give
quite the same results as Aperture and iPhoto, for instance. There are
subtle differences in things like tonal rendition, noise, and saturation.
That’s not all. If you want your photos to exactly mimic the photo
styles of the camera you’re using, you need to use the camera maker’s
own RAW software. Canon cameras, for example, offer a range of
“picture styles,” including Landscape, Portrait, and so on. But Adobe
Camera Raw and Aperture ignore all these and produce a generic color
conversion. To reproduce these picture styles from the RAW ﬁles, you
need to use Canon’s Digital Photo Pro software.
Experimenting with Dodge and Burn can open up new
creative possibilities.
This stack of two images means we have one less thumbnail to
look at or scroll past.
Adobe Camera Raw is built into Lightroom, Photoshop, and Elements, and it
handles RAW ﬁles.
42 JAN•11 maclife.com
IT’S A SNAP! MASTER PHOTO ORGANIZING & EDITING ON YOUR MAC
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